http://cgi.ebay.com/Avalon-Hill-Advanced-Civilization-Expansion-Map-36x76in_W0QQitemZ110256214733QQihZ001QQcategoryZ2558QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

In case anyone is interested.

I have no idea if it's an up-to-date version or not.

Yes those are by forum member Craig Johnson. Besides the map and trade cards you will eventually be able to get counters and advancement cards. Actually you can get counters now but Flo will be revising them.

Yes Flo will be revising the counter art, but it could be months before he is finished. The revisions will be minor I suspect, and when new ones are available you will be able to decide if you really want them or not. They are sold by individual civ sets, so the cost to replace 3 or 4 later is not that big a deal if you want a playable game now. Not everyone will like all the revisions either, so there will be choices available, which is always good. I like what I've seen of Flo's initial changes, and will implement them as soon as he gets them to me. You could technically use the counters that came with the original game and then purchase additional sets to keep the cost down as well. The new art looks much better than the old art in my opinion. I'm not sure why the file isn't availavle on the site for general download yet. They have had it a month now, we could get opinions from other users as to what changes they'd like to see.

The file is available in the archive, and has been for a while now. It's not yet official, as there still are a few issues to work out with the images (which Flo is working on) and colours (which I'm awaiting more input on). And when the colours is finalized, the map has to be updated to match. At that point I'll officially release it all together.

short one:

If any updates are done to the mapboard, we do have some things, (expcept the colors of the players), but I will get back on that.

Well, If we are going to be making map changes I have some suggestions:

The Dawn of History scroll in the upper left corner - I have made revisions to the black outline of theimage and replace the brown background with a detailed scan of real papyrus. Using red ink for the 36pt monotype corsiva font it looks quite nice, and the trade card backs look great that way too.

You are using a dark blue text color for rivers, when surrounded by the dark green river delta color it is very hard to see when printed. You also use a cyan text color for other rivers, could we use that color for all?

The 10 areas of Hellas that you ellected not to put a 1 marker on I have successfully done so and it looks better. Should the white border for Hellas be kept then?

Your map requires a 42inch printer, 36in is much more common and matters little for the actual areas and playability of the map. The trade card outlines for the card stack are too small when scaled down to 36in. I have to preserve the original image and paste it back. I do not have to do this for the AST chart - why? Could you over size the trade card section for the 42 inch version of the map so it will scale down correctly to 36in?

Is flo going to re-create the artwork for the advancement cards? I've noticed that they need to be laid out differently, and the b&w art was scanned in color so when printed they have a brown tint to them - they should be converted to greyscale and placed back onto the cards. The color bars at the top of the cards should not touch each other either, makes it too dificult to cut a stack of them on a large paper cutter. I would reccomend 1/8in white space on each side of the card making a 1/4in cut margin. More margin for cutter error is good, sometimes I can have 25-50% error loss in printing and then the cutter screws up - Yikes! then we're talking 75-100% bad product!

short on time, just a reply on this:

I think you haven't seen the last version of the advances. Jonno can tell you where to find em.

I've scanned all images 600DPI, then turned to grayscale and did some adjustments to contrast and so.

the layout has totally changed.
let's talk about this later. (maybe wotw and diaspora are changed)

there are png and layered psd files of all seperate cards, so no problems here.

BTW, Craig thanks for all your work on this.

I've recently been coming up with area names for Origins, and have become discontent with the area names we use in several locations.

It would be nice if the FTP location had the original multi-layerd map available, that way I could make the modifications I need, etc. Perhaps Jonno can make an official v2.10 map available that we could make our own localized revisions to? That way you could have a 42in, 36in, and 24in version of the map? Just a thought.

With NASA's World Wind software it should be fairly easy to come up with another version of the map from scratch. Although multi-layer images that size at 600dpi require some guts on your computer....

What is this
CivProject/Mapboard/Mapboard(2008-02-21-draft)-Editable.pdf

if not the multi-layer map? That is where my SVG version came from...

That was the image I used and it doesn't have multi-layers that I'm aware of - one for each color of the map, one for the boarders, text, charts, logo, etc.
I would prefer a PSD file in 600dpi. Perhaps, if I get the time, I'll make my own.

no, seriously, the map is an Adobe Illustrator file with layers

The *-Editable.pdf files have layers, lots of layers. You need Adobe Illustrator 10 to work with it properly though (non-Illustrator will ignore the layers, and non-10 versions of Illustrator will missrender it).

If you don't want to use Illustrator 10, try McBeth's svg version. It looks identical, but a few features (such as text on path) isn't properly editable ATM.

I edited the PDF using Illustrator CS1, and it seemed to work just fine (besides me being inept at using Illustrator).